


we put a pearl in the ground

by embryonic



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, F/F, Homophobia, give maggie sawyer a backstory 2k17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 08:52:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10213958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embryonic/pseuds/embryonic
Summary: In her bedroom, the 7 x10 with a twin mattress on the floor of her aunt’s apartment, Maggie thinks about the things she knows are real.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of a sad story with a happy ending (but you probably could've guessed that). 
> 
> Warnings for instances of homophobia, and all the potential trauma that comes with it.

\--

 

“When did you decide you wanted to be a cop?”

The question makes her warm beneath her skin, always. Even after all these years, she thinks back to her Aunt Josie, to the night she picked Maggie up in her police cruiser and drove her all the way out to Lincoln.

There’s this image in her head – all that sprawling land changing from blue to red, blinking, blinking with the lights as they sped past – and her parents’ faces as they drove off. Her mother pale, crying, blue, and her father, red and straight-faced, so firm in his decision. She sees them red and blue and blurry from tears, two shrinking pillars in front of the childhood home that she’d never see again. She does not know how accurate this image is (they could hardly stand to look at her, let alone see her off), and the time-frame gets fuzzier as the years go by. Was it a week, or two, after the Phone Call? Did her mom really creep into her room late that night and apologize, or was that just something she dreamt up? (She can hear it, her soft, damp voice that said she wished it were different).

“Trauma does funny things to our memories,” says the therapist from the precinct that her aunt sends her to once a month, “sometimes we remember things that never happened at all.”

In her bedroom, the 7 x10 with a twin mattress on the floor of her aunt’s apartment, Maggie thinks about the things she knows are real. She knows Eliza Wilkie is real: she knows she has the kind of curls that get caught between her fingers; she knows what her voice sounds like, and the precise way she says Maggie’s name. She knows that her parents are Mitchell and Deborah Wilkie and that they think Maggie is an _abomination_ , and tell her parents so. What might not be real is the way Eliza used to press up real close to Maggie on the bus, or at the lunch tables, how tight she used to squeeze Maggie’s hand when she got excited; what is not real is the way she used to look at Maggie, how she’d stare at her so hard and soft at the same time, that Maggie always had to look away first.

 

It’s different living at Josie’s than it was at her parents. Her aunt is a decade younger than her brother, Maggie’s dad; his reasoning, she supposes, was that only a cop could straighten his daughter out. But Josie’s different. She talks a lot of shit and stays up late and doesn’t cook and keeps cheap beer in the fridge that Maggie sneaks every once in a while, until Josie tells her she doesn’t care, so long as she’s passing her classes and not embarrassing her at the precinct by getting arrested or something dumb. There’s no chance of that, Maggie tells her. She hardly has enough of a social life to warrant getting into trouble.

She keeps her head down at school, and avoids anyone who asks her personal questions. Lincoln’s different from Blue Springs, by a few hundred thousand people at least, but it’s not _that_ different. She’s no longer the only non-white kid at school, but she’s definitely one of the only queer kids, at least as far as she knows, and she has no desire to hear what Lincoln High has to say about that.

She knows what people think of outsiders. She knows how they treat them. She’s at the precinct when she first sees the news reports about the wave of suspected aliens arriving in Lincoln. She does her homework there on Thursdays because it’s close to her school, and Josie gets off at 4:30, so she can catch a ride home instead of taking the bus.

“Fear mongering at its finest,” says Josie of the report, which shows image after image of rough looking aliens and their alleged crimes.

“Where did you come from?” reporters shout at an alien being detained.

“Somewhere far away from this place,” he answers back angrily, eyes looking away from the camera.

He looks human. Josie just shakes her head and huffs when Maggie asks her what they’re going to do to the aliens.

“Another time, kid.”

 

She’s 16 when she meets an alien for the first time.

He blends in well, keeps his head down and dodges questions the same way Maggie does. When they have to give an autobiographical report at school, the kid begins by telling the class, “I’m not from around here”. Maggie notices that he doesn’t give details, and she also notices how he struggles with words that should be simple at their age, that he doesn’t get the pop culture references, or laugh at the jokes that the other kids make when they give their reports. The teacher thinks there’s something wrong with him, she can tell. But she gets a feeling.

“I’m not from around here either,” she tells him at lunch. They’re at opposite ends of the lunch table, alone. He eyes her nervously. That’s another thing Maggie notices. No eye contact. She doesn’t try to force it.

“Where’re you from?” she asks casually, poking at her mashed potatoes.

The kid shrugs, “somewhere far away.”

_Oh_ , Maggie just thinks, something clicking, and nods without a word.

She doesn’t expect him to elaborate, and she’s surprised when she hears, “Where’re _you_ from?”

“Not too far,” Maggie says, “unfortunately.”

He asks her to call him Billy and he is the first person she comes out to by choice.

“I don’t know what that means,” he says easily through a mouthful of the leftover pizza she’d brought home from the joint she works at on the weekends, “les-bi-an.” He shrugs, “I’m Roltikkon.”

“Rol-ti-kkon” she says, “I don’t know what that means either. But I guess we’re both destined to be outcasts.”

“Nah,” says Billy, smiling, “Means we know things the rest of these people don’t. We have a chance to be whatever we want to be.”

Maggie doesn’t know what she wants to be at this point. She knows where she wants to be – or, rather, where she doesn’t want to be. She dreams about taking a bus out of Nebraska all together and getting a job that pays more than her gig at the shitty pizza joint. She imagines herself somewhere far away: California, maybe, or New York. She imagines herself happy, and safe; feeling _normal_ , somehow. She imagines what it’s like to have a girlfriend, a girl she cares about, who cares about her, and she pictures her out in the world somewhere, in a room like Maggie’s, maybe. She wonders what kind of music she likes. If she has any siblings or if she’s an only child like Maggie. She wonders if her parents love her, and hopes very much that they do.

“You could be a cop,” Billy tells her, “like Jos.”

Maggie makes a face.

“What?” He says, “Josie’s cool. And you’d get a gun.”

She thinks. “The gun would be cool,” she agrees, “and Josie’s cool, but cops suck, like, in general. I mean, who do you think are the ones detaining aliens?”

Billy frowns, “It’s only the ones with some kind of bullshit prejudice against us. And you know it’s about more than cops doing their jobs. But anyway, Josie’s not like that. We need more cops like her; ones who stick up for what’s right.”

 

Josie smirks at her when she mentions it.  

“You’re too smart to be a cop,” Her aunt tells her, half joking, maybe. “And you’re _definitely_ too smart to stick around the Lincoln PD.”

Maggie rolls her eyes. She knows what it’s like for Josie at work. She’s one of the only women at her precinct, and she often talks about how ridiculous some of the shit she has to put up with is.

“Well,” Maggie says, “I definitely wouldn’t stay in Nebraska, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

She watches her aunt get ready for work, lacing up her boots, the buttons on her shirt. She fastens the belt around her waist and Maggie sees her like she saw her that night in Blue Springs, appearing taller than she was, face firmer than even her father’s.

“I’m not doing this for you,” she’d heard Josie’s muffled voice as she waited in the cruiser, “I’m doing this because it’s the right thing, and you two are too backwards to see it.”

Maggie did not listen for her parents’ response. She watched Josie from the rearview mirror as she approached the car. She looked so confident, walking with her shoulders back, a gun in her holster, a badge displayed proudly on her belt. How was she so sure of herself? Of what was right? Josie’s face softened when she got into the car, and she sighed. Maggie watched as her home drifted away and away; and then they were gone.

 “Hey, Jos?” Maggie says, back in the living room, two years later, poly sci homework in her lap and one of Josie’s watery beers in her hand.  

“Yeah?”

“Thanks,” she says, “for sticking up for me.”

Josie makes a face, “Yeah, okay weirdo. Anytime.” She ruffles Maggie’s hair as she passes by the couch, “Bring home some of those garlic rolls from work, will you?”

 

She gets accepted into Gotham University’s Criminal Justice program and is so deliriously happy she can hardly believe it’s real. Josie comes home with a bottle of champagne and the tiramisu her partner’s wife makes for special occasions, the kind she knows Maggie loves.

“I’m so proud of you, kid.” Josie tells her, and Maggie can’t help the smile on her face for the rest of the night.

Gotham is 1,500 miles away from Lincoln. The curriculum is prestigious, one of the first to include alien studies, and there is an LGBTQ center on campus and she has enough financial aid and scholarships to cover almost all her tuition. She will never forget that feeling, like she was finally able to pick the lock that had been on her cage for so long.

“You know what the best part is?” She tells Billy, “Now no one ever gets to tell me who to be again.”

And they don’t. It’s the first time she’s _out_ , that she doesn’t constantly feel the need to hide such a huge part of her identity. She’s out and she’s happy and when she meets a girl at the queer mixer she attends with her roommate, she wishes she could show her 14 year old self how much has changed.  

“I can’t believe I have a _girlfriend_ ,” she gushes to her aunt over the phone a few months into the semester. “You have no idea how good it feels to say that.”

Josie laughs, “You’re right,” she says, “I have no idea. But I’m glad you’re happy. It sounds good on you.”

“I can’t wait to get a hold of Billy and tell him,” she says, “he’s gonna die.”

“Yeah, listen,” Josie says slowly, “About that, Mags,”

“What?” Maggie says, sitting up on the bed in her dorm. She can tell something’s wrong. “What happened?”

“I know you’ve been watching the news,” her aunt says, and Maggie closes her eyes. Josie goes on, her voice tinged with annoyance, “the new chief of police is cracking down on crime, which of course means-“

“Alien raids,” Maggie says grimly. “Of course. So what happened to him?”

Her aunt sighs over the phone. “His parents got caught up for something that would be considered a minor infraction if they weren’t aliens. And, well, you know how it goes, Mags..”

“Didn’t you try to help them?” Maggie asks, “to protect them? That’s your job,” she insists, “to do what’s right.”

“Of course I tried to protect them, Maggie. I did everything I could, but it’s not my decision. They have a pro bono lawyer defending them, but, look,” she says, “Billy’s 17. They were going to hold him at a juvenile detention center until they found a foster home for him, but –“

“He left didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Josie confirms, defeated, “I’m not sure where he went. He hasn’t tried to contact you?”

“No,” says Maggie, shaking her head, “I’m sure he doesn’t think it’s safe.”

“He’s a smart kid,” her aunt assures her, “I’m sure he’ll be okay.”

“Okay,” Maggie says softly, “sure, you’re right.”

She pictures him on a bus somewhere, alone with no family, her only friend from Nebraska. She imagines him with his head down, avoiding eye contact and hiding himself away while she is here, out and proud and so certain of what is right in the world that she wants to scream.

 

She goes to pro-alien rallies whenever they’re in the city. She helps organize social justice events on campus and decides to double major in alien biology when she finds out that there’s a wave of new divisions within law enforcement, which could really go either way in terms of helping or hurting alien rights, depending on who is involved in them.

She wants to be a good cop, a detective eventually. She wants to do what’s right and to protect people, whoever they are, wherever they’re from, and she becomes so consumed with ensuring that that is exactly who she becomes that she doesn’t even see the imminent break up coming from a mile away.

“You’re surprised?” her girlfriend – _ex_ -girlfriend – asks her, “I’m shocked you even remember I exist.”

Maggie apologizes, tells her how much she likes her, that she really does care about her – and it’s true, all of it – she has never felt this way about a person before, has never had the _chance_ too, but she does not think she could sacrifice the things that are important to her, no matter how deliriously happy she is.

It’s a pattern she doesn’t ever really learn to break. She dates girls casually for the most part after that, makes it clear that her priorities are her degree and her career. By the time she gets into the police academy, she’s certain that she’s not the type of person who can deal with the messiness of long-term relationships, not when there are so many things that she is concerned with, so many emotions that she’s worked so hard at getting a handle on.

It works for the most part. She finally graduates from the academy, with Josie in the audience, and Maggie recalls her 14 year old self looking at the rearview mirror. She wears her uniform, and holds her shoulders back. She does not know what it is like to be proud of herself until this moment. She knows what is right, and who she is. She’s happy.

 

She’s been working in Gotham City for a year and a half when she gets the call from Josie’s old partner. “I wish I was there to do this in person, Mags,” he tells her through a line of static, “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this.”

She flies to Nebraska for the funeral. The civilian whose life she saved attends and gives Maggie his condolences, and all Maggie can do is nod politely, go through the motions of the ceremony, counting down the moments until she can leave this city and never come back, now that the only good thing about it is gone. She thinks of Billy, too, and wishes he were there to remind her that there are other good things, too.

She watches the city get smaller and smaller as her plane takes off. She closes her eyes; and when she open them she’s somewhere far away.

 

National City is a lot like Gotham. Warmer, definitely. And there are a lot more vegan restaurants that it takes her about 6 months to start appreciating. Most importantly, there is a science division with an open position that is essentially everything Maggie has been working towards in her career.

She makes a home for herself, and keeps work her priority like she always has. When she discovers the alien bar, she becomes a regular almost immediately, and sticks around even after her break up with Darla. She drinks cheap beer and thinks of Josie and sometimes, she’ll catch sight of a young looking kid and think about her friend.

Alex Danvers hands her ass to her at pool and introduces her to her friends here.

James Olsen asks her, “so when did you know you wanted to be a cop?”

He’s friendly, trying to get to know Maggie, she realizes; but she still gets warm beneath her skin. “Oh,” she says, smiling, “I’ve known since I was young. Kind of always felt like the only path for me.”

James smiles warmly at her, "I know that feeling," he says, and doesn’t push for details. She likes him already.

“Wasn’t your aunt a cop?” Alex asks, slipping in beside her at the bar, “I think you’ve mentioned her before.”

“Yeah,” Maggie says, just as the bartender brings them their drinks, “She was a great cop.”

Alex smiles, doesn’t press any further, and laughs unashamedly when Maggie tells her she’s going to kick her ass at pool once and for all.

 

A few months later, she is at the forefront of the movement to declare National City a Sanctuary City for aliens. It’s something she’s been working towards since Cadmus attacked the bar, urging city officials to speak out against the terrorist organization. To provide protection to whoever needs it, no matter where they’re from or who they are.

“It’s the right thing to do,” she says to Kara, who grins as she goes on, “they’re just people from other places. They deserve to live safe and happy lives. National City is going to ensure that they have the opportunity to do so.”

“It’s going to be a great story, Detective Sawyer,” Kara promises, clicking off her recorder, “CatCo is proud to be publishing it.”

 

When she gets home, Alex is already in her apartment, cooking in her kitchen and humming something to herself, dressed in those cheesy pajamas she keeps here. Maggie smiles fondly at her until Alex notices and goes, “what?”

“Nothing,” Maggie shakes her head, smiling, “just –“ she touches Alex’s arm, kisses her softly until both of them break away, smiling like idiots at each other.

“Okay?” Alex says after a moment, and Maggie nods at her, helps her finish cooking, and cleans up the kitchen after they eat while Alex finds something on Netflix to watch.

“Some cop drama,” Alex informs her, resting her head on Maggie’s lap as she settles in on the couch, “right up your ally, Detective Sawyer.”

She laughs, pokes softly at Alex’s ribs until she catches her hand in her own, quieting down as the movie starts, but Maggie cannot focus. She looks at Alex, who looks so content, at home here with her.

She is so stupid in love and all she can imagine is her aunt smirking fondly at her, giving her shit for getting so soft. Maggie smiles to herself.

“I want to tell you about my aunt,” she tells Alex, who takes her attention away from the movie and beams up at her warmly.

“The cop?” she asks, and Maggie runs her fingers through her hair, feels Alex pressed up against her, close and soft and real.

“Yeah,” she says, smiling, “the cop.”


End file.
